Attachments : a novel
(Book)

At a boarding school in Pennsylvania, a deathbed request from the school's dean brings three former students back to campus, where secrets and betrayals from the past are brought out into the open - secrets that could have a catastrophic effect on the dean's eighteen-year-old son. Told in alternating points of view and time frames, "Attachments" is the story of best friends Stewart ("Goody") Goodman, Sand ("Pick") Piccolo, and Laura Appleby, the girl they both love. The friends meet in 1972 at a boarding school in coal-country Pennsylvania where they encounter Henry Griffin, the school dean, whose genuine fatherly interest and deep human bond with them is so strong that when he has a severe stroke almost twenty years later, he uses what could be his last words ever to call out their names. "Attachments" is a puzzle - and the only one who knows how all the pieces fit is in a coma. In the process, longtime secrets are unearthed, revelations come out into the open, and Young Chip Griffin is about to learn something he may or may not be able to handle.